Wake
by Katzedecimal
Summary: Set around/after Countdown to Final Crisis. The Trickster's back but he doesn't know how or why or most importantly, where's Piper?
1. Wake

...wake up... wake... wake up...

...this's gotta be a nightmare... s'gotta be... you guys can't really be... You guys, he's hardly more than a kid! ...you idiots oh god you can't be... s'gotta be a bad dream... can't wake up... Music? Piper? Where'd you disappear to? You were here and now you're not. Where'd you go? Dammit Piper, I need your help here! They're gonna kill him! ...can't wake up... Dammit, Piper, where are you?

...oh god i think he's dead...

...oh god we're really in trouble now, Piper... Piper? Piper? C'mon man, wake up! ...wake up... can't wake up...

... can't wake up... wake up... wake me up... wake**OW!!** Sonova..!!

... yah real funny, Piper, this isn't what I had in mind. What's with the shock chain? What's with the cuffs? ...What's with the Flash? How come he looks like Deadshot? ... maybe he's not dead? ...I thought he was dead. Why'd I think he was dead? Piper? Piper, quit playing your damned flute and tell me what the hell's going on? Piper? Piper? You alright, buddy? Fuck... FUCK! Piper! The fuckin' clasp won't release!! _THE FUCKIN' QUICK CLASP WON'T RELEASE!!_ **PIPER!! _NO!!_**

...it hurts... it hurts, piper... piper? head hurts so bad... piper? piper? where are you going? don't go... piper? piper, don't go... music's so faint... piper, don't leave ...

...hurts so much... one nightmare after another... can't wake up...

...wake up... don' wanna... 'f this issa dream, don' wanna... wake up... mmmmmmmm... god, yes... your lips are soft, Piper... god, you're good at that... this is... This is just 'cause of what that bitch Ivy did to you, okay? That's the only reason I'm letting you do this... 'cause... god... This is... s'cause of all that flute playing, right? Ha! I keel mahself! ... funny, didn't think mine made music... what is that damned tune, anyways? I'm sure I know it from somewhere... Piper? Where'd you go? Huh! - came and went, isn't that just like a man... Aw, c'mere, Piper, did you think I was gonna leave you high and dry? C'mere... Lemme show you a few, heh, tricks... Light fingers, a big hit with the ladies, heh... Just to relieve the symptoms, y'understand... Just 'cause of that damned bitch's pollen... Figures she'd give you a triple dose just 'cause you're gay enough to be resistant... C'mere... yeah... ...i shouldn't be enjoying this, should i... This doesn't make me gay, does it? Piper? Piper? C'mon, Piper, wake up... wake up... we gotta get out of this place...

... gotta get out... If we're innocent, why are we running? ... god, Piper, I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I never forgave myself for that, did you know that? That was stupid of me... I followed the book instead of my instincts... now we're on the run again, huh.. You and me together... The Trickster and the Pied Piper... Piper and Trickster... Pipster.. ha! I keel mahself... god... head hurts... thanks man... one sugar, one hazelnut creamer, you remembered! ..what a guy.. what a great guy... how come you never hooked up again, Piper? Figure you'd be a great catch for someone... not me though... 'Cause I'm the Trickster... I don't need anybody, don't care about no one... that only gets you into trouble... don't want to wake up to anybody... wake up...

...Yeah... the Trickster... I work alone... alone...

Piper? ... Piper? ... why am I alone? Where's Piper? He's supposed to be here, he's always there... always... could always rely on you... now you're gone...

...Piper? ... oh god, Piper, he's dead! ... he's dead... they killed him... he was hardly more than a kid... oh god... oh god... it was a fucking feeding frenzy.. like sharks, like piranhas... if we'd've done anything, they'd've turned on us and we'd be dead too... shot through the head, you and me... Piper? ... sorry..

...sorry... didn't mean to wake you... having a nightmare, I guess... sorry, Piper.. sorry... you playing a lullaby, Piper? ... that's sweet... you're sweet, Hart... sweet Hart, ha!! I keel mahself... you don't mind if I...? ...s'cold... s'so cold... here, wrap my cape around you... keep you warm... why's it so cold, Hart? ... desert's not supposed to be cold, is it? ..supposed to be blazing hot... hawt.. Hey, Hawtley! ha! I keel mahself... head hurts so much... you got anything for a headache, Piper? Besides, y'know, 'not tonight I have a headache'... ha! Aw, c'mon back, Piper... don't go... Piper? Piper! oh god not him! Not now! .. oh god.. oh god...

...i think he's dead... Piper? Oh god, Piper... wake up... wake up... can't ... can't wake up...

Hart? Hartley? Aincha getting tired of dragging me around? ... wait, something's wrong here... Shouldn't I be dragging you around? Dragging... stop dragging my Hart around.. ha! **HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!** ...that was funny... I keel mahself... ow... hurts so much... sun's so bright.. Blinded by the light! ... s'really 'revved up like a deuce?' All these years I thought it was 'wrapped up like a douche.' ... could be worse, though, Cold thought it was 'wrecked up like a doof.' Yeah what a doof he was... wrecked up... wrecked up everything, didn't he... broke his own rules... no wonder you left... bright boy... so bright...

... so bright... s'burning... Hart? Y'need a hand there, Hart? ha! I keel mahself... wherever you go, Hart, a little piece of me will go with you... ha!! oh man.. hurts to laugh... hurts... wish I could wake up... Hart? Piper? Hartley? Where'd you go?

...You went away... that should make me feel better... I don't know how I'm going to get through...

...could somebody please turn off that damned music?! ...sounds like... yeah, that's it... that movie when I was a kid.. about the rabbits... the 'rents thought it was a cute lil' movie about bunnies.. y'know, like Disney? ... boy were they surprised... s'from that movie, yeah... Simon and Garfunkel... or something... You'd know it, right Hartley? Right? Piper? You know it, right? You're playing it, that's your flute, right? Right? ... Piper? ..if you're gone, why am I still here? Did you wake up?

..Can't wake up... can't wake up... Hartley... he's dead... Hart... dead... Hart... dead heart... my heart is dead... Piper? PIPER!! **NO!!** ...not him... not now... not now... not ever... oh god, Piper, he's dead... oh god... Hart? You okay, buddy? C'mon man, I'm worried about you... Fuck, man, why didn't you tell me Ivy's shit was still in your system?! ... yeah yeah, okay, mayyyy-be you have a point... still... I may be straight but I'm not heartless... I'm not Hart-less.. ha! I keel mahself! ... c'mere man... c'mere... can't keep going on like this... can't keep resisting... might as well roll with it...

...blinded by the light... another roller in the night... ha! I keel mahself... Piper? Piper? When was the last time you smiled? ...Piper? Hartley? ...

...how do you do it, Hart? How do you keep going? You never smile anymore...

...neither do I...

...Piper? Where the hell have you gone **now? ** Probably off playing with your damned buzzards again... and your bugs... ...no, rats were your thing... why'd I think..? ..'cause I can hear your damned flute, that must be why... I can hear you but I can't see you... too bright... you went into the light... always knew you would... you were just a mixed-up kid.. you weren't bad... idiot parents didn't deserve a kid like you... s'no wonder you went... Piper? ...if you're gone, why am I still here? ...hey, Piper, you forgot your bugs and birds! ... no rats... too hot for rats... not enough...

...food... oh god... oh god... Piper... he's dead... not him... not now...

...Piper? You okay, buddy? Wake up... wake up, Piper... he's dead... you can't be dead... Piper? You're not dead... 'cause I saved your life... You saw that, right, Piper? Right? I saved your life, right? Twice! Twice in one day! In the same hour, even! You saw that, right? An' I wouldn't do that for just anyone, either! Nuh-uh! 'Cause I'm the Trickster, right? Don't need no one, don't care about anyone. 'Cause you always hurt the ones you... the ones you... always get hurt... always lose the ones you... you...

...you know that, though, right Hart? ...'cause you've been there... you've lost them too... everyone you ever... That's why you came back to the Rogues, right Hart? That's what you said... You sure can't lie, Hart... You're a shitty liar... Not like me... I can lie so well, I can even fool myself...

...why do you do it, Hart? Why do you keep caring? You keep getting hurt and yet you keep caring... I don't know how you do it... it hurts so much... it hurts, Piper... it hurts when you're gone... Hartley? I saved you.. where've you gone?

...I can hear you... but I can't see you... Hartley? Piper? ...why can't I see you? ...where are you? You get us lost again, Hart? What're you looking for? Is that why you dragged us out into the desert? You looking for what you lost? Your family? Your... your ...husband? You looking for your smile, Hart? I got it right here... made you laugh... got you with the 'hobosexual' crack... made you laugh... made you smile... got you with the puppets too... god, I haven't done shit like that in years... why haven't I? One thing about all this crap, Piper, it's like it woke me up inside... made the Trickster wake up...

...wake up, Piper... wake me up... i can't wake up... it's me, isn't it? Piper? ...it's me... you can't be dead 'cause I saved your life... it's me, isn't it... oh god, Piper... call them off... I can hear your damned flute, now call them off!! ...call off the damned birds! ... call off the bugs... Piper... dammit, Piper, where are you?! ... fine time to walk off and leave me all alone...

...you had to... you had to... it's me, isn't it? Isn't it, Piper? I saved your life... and you couldn't save mine... it's me who died, right, Piper?... that's why you went away... 'cause you lost me, too... that's why you were crying... 'cause it hurt...

...Serves you right for caring, you idiot! Look at me, I don't care. I'm not crying because you're not here. I'm not crying because I don't know where you are or if you're still alive. I don't care about you. I don't care about anybody. I'm the _Trickster_ dammit! I work alone! None of this fuckin' Piper and Trickster bullshit! It doesn't matter how well we worked together! It doesn't matter that I could always rely on you the most! It doesn't matter that you sort of understood me, 'cause you _don't!_ **Nobody** does! That's not why I went to find you on the balcony! That's not why I went to talk to you! I didn't miss you!

...Deadshot did, though... Wish he'd missed me as much as he missed you. Ha! I keel mahself... I saved you but I killed myself... Hey Hart, if you're gone, how come I'm still here? Quit playing that damned bunny music and talk to me, here! Where the hell am I? Where the hell are you? We were cuffed together, so where the hell are you? ...oh right, you had to cut my hand off...

Now wait a second, if I'm dead, how come I remember that?! And the... and the... oh god... Piper? Piper, put that damned flute down and... and... fuck... this has just _gotta_ be a dream... s'gotta be a nightmare.. I gotta wake up...

_...wake up!_

_**... WAKE UP!**_


	2. Wake Up

_...wake up!_

_...**WAKE UP!**_

"Doctor? The patient in R1341 is awake."

* * *

The second thing he was aware of was the lack of warmth beside him. His hand flailed but encountered only cold metal rails. He stared blearily at the things and eventually recognised them as the rails of a hospital bed. What were they doing in a hospital? Were they sick? "Piper? 'Re we in a h'sp't'l? H'w c'me?" There was no answer. "Piper?"

The voice that answered wasn't Piper's. Piper wasn't a woman, least not the last time he'd seen him. Was that why they were in a hospital? The woman was speaking gibberish though he couldn't shake the feeling that he ought to understand her. He shook his head, trying to clear it. "Where's Piper?" he asked but the woman just looked blank. As though she didn't understand him, either. He lay back, frustrated and confused.

_Piper? Where'd you disappear to? They're killing the Flash and he's just a kid, Piper! oh god they're killing him and there's nothing I can do._

He woke with a startled cry and flailed, growing panicky when his hand failed to find the warm body that should have been beside him. He encountered cloth, clutched at it, then opened his eyes. White cloth, not green. Just some doctor. Not Piper. Just some doctor, speaking gibberish in a soothing voice, gently pressing him back onto the bed. He lay back obediently and let them do their poking and prodding. Maybe if he cooperated they'd tell him where Piper was.

_You're here somewhere, Piper. You must be, I can hear your flute. You and your damned flute, you could have saved him! You could have stopped it, you could have hypnotised them with your goddamned flute! But noooo, you had to fuck off and disappear. You had to fuck off and leave me. Where the hell did you go? Why aren't you here? We're tied together and you're not here. Piper? **Piper!** Owww!_ The thunder drowned out his scream and another stab of lightning pierced his eyes. Night time? Thought it was day? He looked around again, saw that he was still alone, and flopped back onto the pillow with a despondant moan. His eyes fell on his left hand and stayed there. He was certain something was wrong with it. Something was terribly wrong.

The memory flashed with the lightning: Piper, reaching under the cuff, trying to spread antiseptic over the raw abrasions on his wrist. His left wrist. Where the cuff had been. The cuff was gone and so was Piper. Where'd they go? He got up to look for them. Eventually he found a callus rasp. He felt better after that.

* * *

He was still disoriented but he was slowly improving. He could keep food down now, if it was semi-solids like soup and porridge. He had a marked dislike for apple juice. He was still plagued by nightmares and always woke in a panic, flailing for someone he clearly expected to be there. And he was always distraught that they weren't.

He was still disoriented but he'd improved enough for someone to try to talk to him. The interpreter rolled his eyes and shook his head in disgust. "It's not 'Mexican,' it's Spanish. Mexicans speak Spanish," he muttered to himself. Then he let himself into the room. The patient's eyes lit with anticipation, as they did for everybody, then fell into despondant disappointment when he saw that the visitor wasn't the person he wanted to see.

"Good morning. Can you understand me, senor?" the interpreter asked. The patient frowned and looked as though he was trying to place the words. The interpreter said a few more things. Finally the patient shook his head and said something in a frustrated tone. "Ah! Is that Italian?"

The patient looked up, "Si, sono Italiano."

Not the interpreter's language but sufficiently related and he knew just enough to make himself understood. "I'll have an Italian interpreter here within the hour," he assured the blond man.

"Si, si, grazie, grazie," the blond patient looked so pathetically relieved, the interpreter clasped his hand impulsively.

Three hours later, the Italian interpreter ran her fingers through her hair, "He sounds pretty delirious. He says he scarred himself because there's something wrong with his left hand. I asked him who he's looking for but he says he's looking for his heart. Says he doesn't know if his heart is dead or alive. I think he must speak some English because he was always using the English word, not the Italian. Also, he says he's looking for the pied piper. Suppose someone read too many fairy tales?"

The doctor shrugged, taking notes, "The patient was in coma for a long time and only woke up last week. His brain is still recovering, such delusions aren't unexpected or abnormal. Were you able to get his name?"

"Sorry, no. It looked like he was having trouble remembering. All he could say was that he's some kind of joker or something."

* * *

With the interpreter, things became smoother. Now that they understood more about the symptoms plaguing the blond man, they could give him more precise medications. They could start him on physical therapy. They'd feared amnesia but it appeared that the man could remember quite a lot -- he just didn't understand what he was remembering. It was all jumbled up, accounting for his confusion and delerious state. But he was improving.

It was some weeks later when the physical therapist approached the attending doctor with some pieces of paper. "I saw it on TV last night. They did a special on the Rogues. You know, the Flash's enemies?" The doctor nodded and he continued, "There's this one guy who used to be a Rogue. Apparently he's hunting them now. He's called Piper."

The doctor stared, "As in... _Pied_ Piper."

The therapist nodded, "Turns out that's what this guy was called when he was a Rogue. So I did a little searching around online and get this: His name is Hartley Rathaway."

The doctor started to smile, "Hartley... Hart. He's searching for his Hart."

"Could be."

"Easy enough to find out. I'll call Mrs. Venezia."

Mrs. Venezia didn't even finish the question. The man snatched the photograph out of her hand and stared at it. "It's him! It's him!! Is he alive?"

Mrs. Venezia felt relieved -- at last she could give him some good news, **"Si."**

The poor man was just jubilant. He stared at the picture and the tears flowed freely. "He's alive... he's alive..."

"Any chance we can get ahold of this character?" the doctor asked another doctor, who shrugged. He turned back to Mrs. Venezia, "Tell him we'll try to find this guy but it may take a while and there's no guarantee that we can. Frankly, I don't even know where to begin."

The interpreter nodded and turned to translate but stopped. The blond man had been looking through the other images and was now staring at one and stabbing it excitedly, "It's me! That's me!"

She leaned over to look. "What is it?" the doctor asked, "Is he saying that's him?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Venezia, "It's a picture of this Piper with another Rogue, the Trickster. They look like they were friends."

The doctor was about to reply but caught the physical therapist's barely-perceptible headshake just in time. "We'll see what we can do," he said, "When you're finished, I'll take your report in my office." So saying, he left the patient's room and hurried to his office, noting the physical therapist's agitation. "Alright," he said, closing the door, "What's up?"

"I don't know if we should bother this Piper guy for a delusional patient."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it was on that Rogues special last night. This guy _can't_ be the Trickster. " the physical therapist's hands flashed over keyboard and mouse. Finally he turned the monitor and showed the doctor the obituary, "The Trickster's dead."


	3. Eulogy

Twelve weeks since he woke up and still can't quite believe it. The doctors had feared amnesia but he remembered. He remembered all too well. Every night, his dreams were filled with what he remembered.

He got up and shuffled to the window. He was walking better, if still a bit slowly, and the physical therapist said he was making excellent progress for having been so long in coma. He glanced at the calendar again - a long time, alright.

_I shouldn't be here at all. I died. I distinctly remember being dead. I remember quite clearly being shot._ He glanced down at his left hand - his impossible left hand. _I remember that, too. So how did I get here?_ He turned and walked out of his room and down the hall to the patient lounge. He didn't really need to, as there was a coffee pot in his room, but he needed the exercise. Besides, now that his brain had remembered how to speak and read English, he wanted to hit the computer again.

The hospital knew him as Giovanni Guiseppe but he knew himself as the Trickster. So he was a little surprised to hear his name on the news, talking about something he definitely wasn't doing. He looked up and frowned - were there two of him? He glanced at his left hand. If there were, it'd explain why he was dead and yet sitting here in hospital, but then who was the Trickster on the news who'd got his ass handed to him in an altercation with the Flash and _DON'T CHANGE THE CHANNEL oh you idiot..._

Still, taken to hospital, huh? They didn't say which one, but this being the General... Shouldn't have been so easy to hack into the hospital's server from a public-access comp but he wasn't called the Trickster for nothing. He made sure of that. His time with the FBI had taught him a lot about IT security.

That's right, there was a kid, wasn't there? A kid who'd thought he was good enough to nick his gear, his alias and his M.O. _Guess the kid took advantage of my death. Guess someone took exception to that,_ he thought, judging by what he was seeing in the E.R. report. He noted the ward that the kid was being transferred to and picked up his coffee.

"..hurts... fuckin' jerk... was jus' kidding..." _That's the kid, alright._

"I don't think he was in the mood for jokes. You picked the wrong time to put on that costume and the wrong person to make fun of."_ And who's that? Voice is familiar._

"He never went ratshit on the other guy! He let him walk all over him!" _'**Rat**shit?' He must mean Piper! Good._

"That's because he was the Trickster."

**"I'm** the Trickster!"

"No Axel, you're not. You got off with a warning: If you're gonna be a Rogue, find another M.O. Not that it's a good time to be a Rogue right now..."

"You call **this** a warning?!"

"After what he did to Mirror Master? You got off lightly! Now quit stressing yourself out, you'll pop your stitches."

"Ow... he didn't have to mess my face up. Who puts **razor blades** in their gloves?"

"Rats have claws. And it was only one swipe. They're parallel and they're not deep, they only used butterfly bandages to close them. They'll heal up fine. It'll look rakish." _...razor blades?_

"I guess so. How is ol' M.M. anyways?"

"Not good. From what I heard, they're going to have to transfer him to Arkham. Even if his bed squeaks, he freaks right out. Whatever he did to him, he played for keeps." _...We **are** talking about Piper here, right?_

"Well if he swarmed him with rats like he did me..."

"You got **just** the rats. Whatever he did to Mirror Master involved that damned flute of his." _**Piper??** I can't fuckin' believe this. Are they saying **Piper** slashed the kid up and drove Mirror Master insane?!_

"Jesus... Who'd've thought the queer'd be so hardcore."

"Knock it off. You hit a lot of open wounds. He was being patient with you until you went too far." _That sounds more like Hartley._

"So were him and the other guy, like.. y'know..." _**NO.**_

"No. Or if they were, they were extremely quiet about it. I didn't notice anything like that when I worked with them on the Project." _Magenta! That's who she is! Fuck, haven't heard a peep out of her in years..._

"So what were they, then?"

"Close friends." _Yeah right._ "Out of all of us, they worked the best together. They bickered a lot but that was just James being James. He was a conman, he was always looking for your weaknesses and Hartley had an obvious target. But when they were in a pinch, it was like they had one mind. They seemed to just **know** what the other was thinking, what to do."_ ...like battery acid discus._

"So why'd he let him walk on him then?"

"He didn't. You never saw him trading barbs with Digger. Digger was worse than James for the off-colour comments but Hartley could smack him down with one-liners that had us rolling. And if James got in on it, forget trying to drink anything. Those two were a riot."

"I find that hard to believe."

"They were! James was the cut-up and Hartley was the straight man." _So to speak._ "James was just being James and I think Hartley understood that. I think Hartley was the only one of us who understood James at all. And James used to say that Hartley was the only one he could rely on. He said it mockingly but I think he really meant it. In a lot of ways, I think they fed each other's needs. Piper was important to James and Hartley needed that." ..._..._

"But they weren't...?"_ No! We weren't!_

"I don't think so. But if they weren't, they should have been. They were pretty much a couple in every other way." ..._... _"And now James is dead. From what I understand, brutally, and right in front of Piper. Piper was pretty much the only person James truly cared about, and James was murdered right in front of him. That's what you've been merrily trampling over with cleats."_ ...I'm the only one who didn't see this, aren't I._

"... oh."

"So if I were you, Axel, I'd take the hint and find another M.O!" There was a long cold pause then the scrape of a chair being shoved back. "...'m gonna get some coffee."

James tried to step back in time but Magenta nearly ran right into him. He covered her mouth before she could gasp. "Shh!"

**"James?!"**

"You haven't seen me. You've seen a ghost. Where is he?"

"Wha..? Huh, who? James, is it really you?"

"Can't be, you said it yourself, I'm dead._ Now where's Piper?"_

"He... I don't know! I don't know where he's living now or where his base of operations is!"

James swore under his breath. "Alright. Go get your coffee. And remember - you haven't seen me. You've seen a ghost." He turned and walked off.

Magenta sat back down beside Axel's bed and shakily sipped her coffee. "What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Magenta sipped a few more times, having to use both hands to keep the cup steady. "Yeah. Yeah. That's what I saw. A ghost. Definitely saw a ghost."


	4. My Girl

"We're sorry. The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service." James set the phone back into its cradle. Land line disconnected, cel reassigned and a few discreet inquiries revealed that the house had been demolished and the land sold. The homeless shelter, rape crisis center and LGBT helpline all said they hadn't heard from him since before that ill-fated gathering of the Rogues. Every lead James chased was coming up a dead end. If Piper was still in Keystone, he was keeping _very_ quiet.

More than likely, Magenta was right and he wasn't in Keystone anymore. If that was the case, he'd need more than just the hospital's public-access computer system to track Piper down, but he'd covered that after visiting hours were over. Hey, fair's fair, the kid had nicked his gear, so he'd nicked the little fucker's laptop. In its place he'd left a Fisher-Price laptop he'd stolen from the kiddie ward downstairs. Still, the public-access system had its uses - motivation, for one.

Hartley's old blog had been shut down and comments-locked for months. The last entry broke James's heart every time he saw it: A photograph of his old Trickster puppet, lying forlorn, with his birth and death dates superimposed on it. Every time he saw it, he teared up. Every time he saw it, it renewed his determination to find Piper.

He wondered if his old picture account was still active; it was. It was friends-only, and since James didn't have many friends, very few people ever saw the images he'd stored there. Some old girlfriends, some of Wally, some of the Rogues, some of Magenta and Heatwave from the old Project days. Some of Piper.

He pulled up his favorite, a candid shot from the Project days, that he'd taken while Piper's attention was elsewhere. Piper, in his costume, sitting crosslegged on the floor with his rats. The things were all over him and he'd cuddled and stroked them as if they were pets, his face partially hidden by his cowl. In the twilight, the shadows and his own mood had given him a dark and dangerous magnetism. Looking at it now - Piper's fingers splayed over the rat that nuzzled beneath his jaw, cupping another cradled against his chest, more leaning over his shoulders and crawling into his lap, the dark shadows playing over them - the image seemed almost erotic. It spoke of a brooding storm, its power held back by cobwebs.

Magenta had been a little uncomfortable around this Piper but she hadn't really known him when he was a delinquent kid reject: He would have been Goth if New Wave hadn't gotten to him first. Trickster remembered the copper-haired kid, always hanging in the background, silently listening, his cybernetic ears picking up all the secrets and tucking them away. And if he was feeling particularly malicious, he'd tell Trickster what he knew. In his own way, Piper was as manipulative as Trickster was himself, and he had a knack for getting you to do his dirty work, even without the flute.

And then he'd quit the Rogues and gone straight - so to speak, because it was some time around then that he'd gotten himself a steady boyfriend. Someone who filled the need that had turned Piper Roguish in the first place. He'd blossomed after that, gone from a dorky-looking kid to a total chickmagnet, which irony always made Trickster smirk.

Then Iron Heights had happened. As if it weren't enough that he'd been framed for the murder of his parents - his own parents, for pity's sake! - they'd sent Piper _there._ And all the hours of community service, voluntary community service, not ordered by any judge.. all the years of working with the homeless, of administering crisis aid to terrified women and broken children, all the **good** he'd done with his life, it all counted for nothing -- he'd been a Rogue and that was all the justification they needed for all the beatings and all the torture. James knew the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. He knew about the Wolfe's 'cone of silence,' too. And these were the 'good guys.' _I never forgave myself for not hearing you out, dude._

Piper had never talked about it. Piper was an extremely private person and seldom talked about himself. It surprised people, when they ever stopped to think about it, because Piper was an out and proud queer. But he wore his gay identity like Trickster wore his stripes, as both a target and a shield. People were so distracted by the big shiny Ghey that they didn't look at the man himself, in case it led to Too Much Information. It had certainly worked on James.

This picture was James's favorite because it just seemed to be the sum of everything Piper: The darkness, the secrets, the tenderness, the heart that could love even those considered to be vermin by the rest of humanity, yet was himself unloved. James shivered, then shook his head and started up a search engine.

A few hours later he'd come up with nothing, as expected. Still, all the wandering and link-chasing had been entertaining. Courtesy of several rat fanciers' sites and wiki entries, he now knew why Piper's rat pipes were silent: They were like dog whistles. Rats' voices went into the ultrasonic ranges, but that was no problem for the Pied Piper and his cybernetic cochleae. No wonder he looked a bit loopy when he was with his rats - he was reacting to things that other people couldn't hear.

He surfed around for a while longer, then came across something that shook him up._ '..seems to purport the idea that it is possible for someone who is heterosexual to fall in love with someone of the same gender, and for someone who is homosexual to fall in love with someone of a different gender,'_ he read. He felt his hands go clammy and his stomach did a backflip and he blinked hard against the pressure of tears. _My god... is that what happened? Is that why...? I didn't fall in love with him, did I? But this is saying it's possible..._

A memory flashed: Piper hardly ever talked about himself, but out in the desert, he'd opened up a little. _And I had to be dead for you to do it,_ James thought regretfully. But he understood why; Trickster had always exploited such personal tidbits. Out in the desert, Hartley had talked a little, telling what was left of James things like when he'd first realized that he was gay, the girlfriends he'd had when he was denying it (Piper, a slut?! That would've shocked the heck out of James if he'd been alive and was still a bit of a surprise) And about his parents' reasons for having a child.

The phrase 'romantic friendship' caught his eye and he chased after it. That too seemed to fit, and he flipped back and forth between the articles, trying to figure out what the hell was going on in his head. In his heart. He opened another window and brought back that image of Piper, then looked at the articles again. No matter which way it went, whether it was love or this 'romantic friendship,' both seemed to be saying that the intense attachment he felt towards Piper wasn't unheard of and may not even have anything to do with being gay, might even be separate from sexuality entirely. Then the word 'soulmate' caught his eye and he sat back, defeated. He stared at the image of Piper and at his own impossible left hand, that he'd scarred himself in his dementia._ Soulmate. That's fuckin' it, isn't it. You're my soulmate_.

Out in the desert, Piper had told him about the abortions. Rachel Rathaway had been pregnant twice, before Hartley was born. Both were girls; The Rathaways had wanted a boy to be their heir and to carry the family name. It was highly illegal, but the Rathaways had money, and money could buy a lot of silence. _Maybe they were you,_ James thought, staring at the image on the screen, _Maybe that's why you ended up queer, maybe 'cause you were supposed to be a girl. My girl. Maybe you were so determined to get here, you became a boy just so they'd let you into the damned world. Hah, bet you've been regretting that ever since._

He glanced at the time; almost time for his appointment with the shrink. He usually gave the shrink a run-around. Not that the shrink hadn't been useful in helping him re-order his brain and make sense of the scrambled eggs that his memory had become, but there were some things he just **couldn't** talk about, y'know? Like being dead, like remembering things that'd happened _after_ he'd died. But this time... this was just too... this time, he might just need the shrink. He picked up his coffee and noticed how badly his hands were shaking. _Yeah. Think I need the shrink to make sense of this one._


	5. Hell's Bells

James was getting better. _Won't be long before they release me back into the pond. Pity I don't have a pond to go to._ Then they'd send him a forty-page hospital bill for all the time he'd spent in coma. Pity he had no insurance, not that they'd've paid out anyways. Even he hadn't been able to negotiate a 'died and resurrected' clause after his brush with Neron in the underworld.

He really wished he could overlook that. He wished he could forget it like everyone else seemed to have, but now - _especially_ now - he couldn't seem to forget **anything.**

The shrink had been helpful, he had to admit. He could settle a lot of it but she'd suggested he talk to the hospital's priest to settle the rest of it and there was no way **that** was ever happening, not after...

...but that was long ago and anyways, Piper wasn't that type. He'd learned that, in his gut, after Piper had fought Poison Ivy's pollen for days. Anyways, he'd fallen away from Church - gee, wonder why, the Church had fallen away from its own teachings. It didn't follow its own rules, so why should he? He knew his parents wouldn't believe him so why should he believe...

_...maybe I **should** talk to the shrink about this, _James sighed to himself, rubbing his forehead. He knew what was bringing it on. Piper was gay and according to the Church, homosexuals went to Hell.

Which was further proof that things were screwed up, because Piper was a straight-up guy in every other sense of the word. He donated time and money and not the feel-good kind either, but because he actually cared. James understood why but never understood what he got out of it, but what he didn't deserve was what the Church said was waiting for him.

Problem was, the Church was right: There was a Hell and he'd been lured there by the Man himself. He'd tricked his way out by luck and the skin of his teeth and he'd thrown himself into the Good because he didn't dare risk going back.

But being Good had sucked the life out of him. All the laughs, all the funsies - his time with the FBI had drained all of that out until even his friends were wondering who this 'Agent Jesse' guy was and what had he done with Trickster? And they were right. Some of the things the Bureau had made him do sickened him, because they weren't just evil, they were evil under the mask of Good. Heck, even half the "superheroes" nowadays seemed to be in it more for the 'beating people up' part; how did that make them any better than the villains? At least the villains were honest about it. But the kiddie-porn cops, the trafficking doctors, the sadist prison guards, the mercenary aid workers, the.. the... yeah, _them_ - they all got away with it because they were the Good Guys and it was just inconceivable that the Good Guys could ever do Wrong.

Where were God and Jesus and Mother Mary in all of this? They didn't seem to be there. There seemed to be an awful lot of evil and precious little genuine good and wasn't it enough to make you throw in the towel and give up trying to be anything and just look out for Number 1? And didn't that put him right back where he'd started, all those years ago? He'd put the stripes back on, just like all those years ago.

_Did you ever understand the stripes, Piper?_ James thought as he worked, _Figured you might, if anyone could. Yellow and blue? Day and night? Good and bad. I'm a **Trickster** I'm not evil. Punk I lifted this laptop from completely fails to understand what being a trickster **means.**_

There didn't seem to be a God or a Heaven but he **knew** there was a Hell. The Church had been right about that... so what else did they get right by chance? After the way he'd duped his way out, Neron would _love_ to get his hands on Trickster's soul, so he didn't dare engage in any soul-risking behaviour ...like loving Piper.

On the other hand, if the Church was right, then Piper was going straight to Hell and lost to Trickster anyways. Probably pretty empty in Heaven, he'd get awfully lonely. Probably only have Jesus and Mary and maybe a couple of saints around to bug; that'd get old pretty fast. At least in Hell he'd have Piper. Or not... they'd probably separate them and he'd spend all eternity trying to one-up Neron and wouldn't even have Piper around to laugh at him. Nuts.

Not like he had him now, though. Almost all of his searches had turned up nothing. It seemed that, after dealing with the Rogues, the guy had just _vanished._ If he hadn't found the active bank account, James would've wondered whether Piper was even still alive. The transactions were all over the place and sporadic: Either Piper was moving around a lot or this was a travel account and intended to throw off people who might be looking for him (unfortunately this included James.) His personal accounts and the Rathaway fortune investment accounts were all untraceable -- Piper had learned a lot from the FBI too.

Still, there were enough transactions coming from Gotham to pique Trickster's senses. He remembered Magenta saying that Mirror Master had been transferred there, to Arkham. _Oh yeah, there's a place with a history of success,_ James snorted. Maybe Piper was going there to admire his handiwork? _Nahhhhhh, not Piper._ Still... with everything he'd been hearing about Piper lately... Maybe it'd gotten to Piper, too? After all, he'd done a lot of good - a lot of _genuine_ good - and what had he gotten in return? A fuck of a lot of cruel shit. Maybe that run had been the last straw? Maybe dragging Trickster's murdered ass through the desert had broken Hartley's giveadamn? ...the thought of Piper with a broken giveadamn was just plain scary. Also heart-wrenching. If even _Piper_ threw in the towel... But he didn't know that for sure.

Well, Gotham. At least it was a place to start. _Should've trademarked the name,_ James thought for the umpteenth time. Oh well. Dealing himself in as a share-holder, he set it up to skim an even half-percent into his shiny new bank account every month. Half a percent sounded measly but with Nike's profits, it'd be comfortable enough. Besides, they wouldn't be the only contributors. As a special touch, he skimmed a third of his hospital bill off of Nike's CEO, marking it as a 'charitable donation' so the accountants wouldn't blink. Microsoft made a donation to the Trickster fund, too. Then he skimmed a little into the coffers of the Keystone Society for the Homeless, and the crisis center that Hartley used to volunteer at, patching up broken souls with his presence.

_And going to Hell despite it._ James shook his head. That was the odd thing: He could remember most of what had happened after he'd died, but he couldn't remember going anywhere. He was pretty sure he didn't go to Heaven, and he was positive he hadn't gone to Hell. _Maybe the Church was right about Limbo,_ he thought, then shook his head again, _No, Limbo's only for unbaptised babies and the guys out in the boonies that the missionaries haven't got to yet. I was baptised and confirmed and then rejected the whole mess, that should've earned me a one-way ticket even without getting playful with Hartley. So what the hell? ... so to speak. I mean, if I was going to go to Hell, I should've gone when I died. But I didn't. So what does that mean? Heaven doesn't want me and Hell's afraid I'm gonna take over?_ He sighed again. He had too many questions and no answers: How did he come alive again? Why did he remember what happened after he'd died? How did he get his body back? And most importantly, _What am I supposed to do about Hartley?_

He hadn't gone to Hell, he'd been brought back to life and he missed Hartley more than he'd ever thought he could. It felt like half of him was missing and he couldn't stand the ache. Magenta was right, he'd _cared_ about Piper, he genuinely liked the guy, and somewhere along the run, those feelings had intensified into something that the Church said should've sent him to Hell. And he hadn't gone. So what the hell?

He sat back and put his hands over his face. _And yet despite all these doubts, I'm still determined to find the guy. I haven't wavered on that at all. Fuck, I just transferred a bunch of stolen electronic money to his favorite charities to make him happy. So maybe I've already decided._

James shook his head once more and took a long swig of his coffee. Then he called up the best tailor in Keystone and placed an order for some clothes.


	6. Delta Blues

_o/ Put on my blue suede shoes and I boarded the plane...o/ _...Not that the plane would touch down in the land of the delta blues, much less the pouring rain -- the weather in Gotham was partly cloudy, according to the weather channel.

James put on his shoes and flexed his feet. His new Mark VII Airwalkers had tested out alright, though he hadn't yet put them through their paces. They weren't as attention-getting as the usual elf-shoes model, but they were very comfortable. When the time came, they'd work just fine.

The hospital had finally deemed him fit to release back into the wild and he was checking out. He was dressed in civvies and had his new costume in his sack, along with his new bag of tricks. His most essential tricks were in pockets in his belt and in his jeans and jacket - can't have too many tricks. The sack - he just couldn't resist - was a large sack of green and white polka-dotted fabric, tied to a pole.

He felt not even a twinge of guilt over having skimmed money from several corporate heads, marked as "charitable donations," to pay for his hospital bill. Well, they **were** donating to the needy and homeless -- having been declared dead, his estate had been distributed, his accounts closed and his condo sold. He had a conscience, sure, and it was clear.

_'Cause it's all about me, baby,_ he thought. He was the Trickster, he worked alone, and the only one who mattered was him. He was the world's greatest con artist and the key to a good con was knowing what meant the most to the other guy. Nobody could con you, nobody could hurt you, if you didn't let them in.

Then he'd turned around and found a rat hole in his heart, where he least expected it, and that had unnerved him. He could face that now: He'd been uncomfortable that Piper mattered to him, and had mattered for longer than he'd thought. And during the run, when those feelings had started growing stronger, he'd freaked out. The sad thing was, and he could admit it now, he'd been freaked out as much by the realisation that he loved someone, as by that someone being a guy.

_"Or is it the realisation that you are not what you thought you were? Or that you're not as you had defined yourself to be?"_ That was the shrink and as soon as she'd said it, he knew that that's what half his problem was. He'd set up rules for himself and then his stupid heart had gone and broken them. Sure, he was the Trickster, he broke all the rules, but he wasn't supposed to break his_ own_ rules!

He sipped his coffee while waiting for the taxi. Caring so deeply about someone opened a huge vulnerability, just begging to be hurt. And it was hurting: He was without Piper and it hurt like hell. He could keep fighting it, try to pretend it wasn't there, and hope that time would heal it. Or he could hook up with Piper, fear a lot more hurt in the future, and have a heck of a lot of fun passing the time.

'Cause it had been fun. ...Well, disregarding the shock chain, the starving, the dirt and cold, the being shot at, the constant adrenalin charge from being keyed up all the time, and the humiliation of having no privacy whatsoever... But _besides_ all of that... There had been a lot of great moments, like pitching the Joker's TV bomb at Poison Ivy, the puppet defense, battery acid discus... and a lot of the little moments, like cracking up Piper with mondogreens, or the 'carnivorous bag of chips' stunt at those gangsta-wannabes, and that one brief time when he'd surprised Piper by cooking for him. Yeah, when he stopped fighting it, they were a lot of fun together and had gotten up a lot of people's noses. It felt like the Trickster had woken up inside. Even their powers complimented each other, when he thought about it.

James sighed and finished his coffee, crumpling up the paper cup and pitching it. Hooking up with Piper would leave both of them vulnerable to the same sort of hurt that Piper had gone through twice, now. Both of his Jameses had died and not much hurt more than that. James knew that because both of his parents had died, and he'd never wanted to go through that again. It was the last straw, after... but anyways. If anyone was going to get hurt, it wasn't going to be him. And then he'd found that his heart had picked up a rat infestation somewhere along the line. What a trick to play on himself -- the guy who'd dealt himself out of the caring game had not only fallen hard, but for a guy. For **Piper.** _Of all the people in the world, it had to be him, didn't it. The one I'm the most afraid of._

The taxi pulled up. He said goodbye to the nurses, the doctors, the physical therapist and the interpreter who'd made life a lot easier while his brain tried to remember how to turn gibberish into his second language. He stared out at the familiar streets of Keystone on the way to the airport. The worst was being controlled. The worst for any con artist was someone getting the jump on him. And what was Piper's talent? - He could make you do whatever he wanted and if he chose, you'd never even realize it. For someone like James Jesse, the Pied Piper was a real threat.

It all sounded so simple, so childish and simple and stupid. Worst part was, he knew it, but it was.. well, childish, simple and stupid, and he liked things complicated. And his heart had delivered.

He brushed his hair back and grinned to himself. He'd only gone and tricked himself, hadn't he? He'd painted himself into a corner with his own rules. He'd never backed down from a challenge and he'd challenged himself with a man who embodied his own worst fears. And he couldn't back down, because that was his life's motto: 'Feel the fear and do it anyways.'

He checked in at the ticket counter and went to the gate. A while yet to boarding. He bought a coffee with hazelnut flavour shot, and grinned: They'd stayed at a safehouse for a little while and had done a midnight raid on a grocery store to get some fresh food. James had unpacked the loot and found a pint of hazelnut creamer that Piper had nicked. Despite himself, he'd been touched. Of all the times to remember that he liked hazelnut creamer in his coffee...

Yeah, he'd been able to sort it all out for himself and make it fit with his personal mythology. It'd always been 'It's all about me', and somewhere, it had become about Piper, too. _But if Piper really is my soulmate, then he's part of me, so that's okay. And if I'm afraid to be with him, well, 'feel the fear and do it anyways,' so that's okay too._

It still surprised him, the strength of dedication that he felt. Despite all the fears and doubts, he'd never once wavered on the conviction that he had to find Piper. Not once. He still had nightmares and he still felt a desperate sense of loss when he woke up alone. That wound just wasn't going to go away. The only way to make it go away was to hook up with Piper again.

Piper had become the best friend he'd ever had. He was audience, straight man ("so to speak") and scheming partner. He listened while Trickster prattled on, filling the silence that distressed Piper. He'd gone looking for Piper and found him on the balcony and the guy'd seemed so happy to see him he'd even smiled. Probably because Trickster had remembered that he was there._ Magenta said Piper and I filled each other's needs. I think I know what she meant by that now. Nobody really paid much attention to Piper and hardly anybody ever said boo to him when he quit the Rogues but I never really stopped. Always dropped him an email now and then or a drive-by IM or stupid messages on his voicemail. Stuff that acknowledged his existance. I never really thought of it like that._

During the run, that had strengthened. He was always bugging Piper or making him laugh, always chattering and keeping the silence at bay... and Piper was always bitching back or laughing at him or threatening to kill him, something he would just never do. Always reacting, always playing the game. _You didn't have to let me con you. You could've hypnotised me into forgetting what you did with that businessman. I think, deep down I've always known that -- you're the only one I can't con, unless you let me. It's too bad you weren't a girl, but I'll deal with it. Feel the fear and do it anyways. More fun that way._

It just didn't matter anymore. What mattered was finding Piper. What mattered was soothing the wounds in Hartley's heart. What mattered was putting the song back in Hartley's soul and the smile back on his face and making him laugh until he didn't dare drink anything. Because doing all of that had put the fun back in Trickster's life. _I felt like me again._ He finished the coffee as the attendants announced boarding. If it meant being gay for Hartley... well, talking him off had been a heck of a lot of fun and the guy sure gave a good blowjob.

He put on his blue suede shoes and boarded the plane.


	7. Torn

The last shovelful of earth was pitched in and he tramped it down. That was the problem with rats, they didn't live more than a few years. Peaches had had a fuller life than most rats, having been one of Hartley's, and her death from a stroke had been quick. It was one more death in a long, long string of deaths. He dusted off his hands then wiped his tears and went inside.

He was trying not to think and not having much success. It had been a while since he'd pursued the Rogues and he was still a little distressed by the things that he had done. Mirror Master... well, even he found it difficult to feel any kind of guilt over that. It still paled in comparison to what the asshole had done to_ him._ But... transferred to Arkham? - maybe not by much. The main difference was, Mirror Master had done something to deserve it.

But the kid, who had the _balls_ to call himself the Trickster, so soon after James had died... Hartley had tried to be patient with him, tried to warn the kid off, but then he'd learned what the kid had been doing and he was calling himself _the Trickster...!!_

He looked up and saw the Trickster puppet, sitting on the chesterfield. It still hurt, so badly. He wondered how much that jackass god guy had had to do with it, the one he'd later learned was called DeSaad. He'd always liked James and had always considered him a friend.. That jackass DeSaad had admitted that he'd been fucking around ruining Piper's life and had manipulated the Penguin and Deadshot...

_And what else had he engineered? How far back did it go? Iron Heights? My parents' murder?_ That had been bothering him for some time now._ James's car accident?_ That was when Hartley's life had started to tank, the first drop in a very deep bucket of despair, when that bright star was snuffed out and the happiest time of his life had crashed to an end. The only person who'd truly loved Hartley Rathaway.

There was only one other time that the world had seemed so bleak, and that was the day he realized that his parents didn't love him. He was not quite eleven years old and couldn't sleep. Usually he prowled around the house just waiting for sleep to come; that time, he'd followed the sounds of an argument. His parents, arguing about him. The way they'd talked about him... They'd only wanted a boy to carry on the family name and business and he wasn't working out, he was flawed... Every word flayed his young soul with razors, stripping away the illusion that he could ever hope to please them, that anything he did would ever be good enough. The pain had burned into his heart and festered there, becoming resentment then rebellion, then finally, Rogue._ Did he engineer that too? I doubt I would have discovered my powers in any other way. How far does it go? What else did that jackass do?_

The jackass had engineered Trickster's death._ Wonder if he'd engineered things so that I'd fall for Tricks, as well._ He picked up the puppet and cuddled it. Even with his constant baiting, Trickster's company had started to fill the yawning void left by his own James. He'd waited patiently while Trickster worked out his own issues...

_...and how much had DeSaad had to do with **that?**_ Hartley thought suddenly. It hadn't even occurred to him until now, but now... He put his hand to his forehead. _'Not him.. not now.'_ He'd been certain that James had felt something for him, absolutely positive. He knew that James had been attracted to him, knew that James had been curious. And was pretty certain that James was coming to feel something more than friendship for Piper. Hartley'd seen it a hundred times before and had done the only thing he could do -- wait it out, give Tricks the space he needed to work out for himself what he was feeling.

But how much of what Tricks was feeling was really **his?** How much had been forced on him by that bastard DeSaad?_ 'Not him.. not now.'_ -- because the gun had been aimed at Piper and DeSaad wanted Piper alive? Had Trickster's emotions been manipulated, just as Penguin and Deadshot had been? Of all the rotten things to do to a guy...

**_BAS-TAAAAAAAAARD!!_**

Hartley fell to his knees, then to the floor, curling up around the tiny Trickster puppet that he clutched to his chest. He couldn't stop the sobs and couldn't slow their rise to a hysterical pitch. The rats clustered around him, to give what little comfort they could.


	8. Trick Question

The cel rang. Hartley glanced at it, then frowned when he saw the caller ID. "what's up, Quest?"

"'Evening, wise brother. I have a question."

"Of course you do, that's why you're calling," Hartley sighed. Super-hero gimmicks...

"The Scarecrow's back in town only he's not using his fear gas. Somehow he's digging up people's fears without the gas and talking them into suicide. Any ideas how?"

"Vocal harmonics would do it," Hartley replied immediately, "Is he talking_ like this?"_

In Gotham, the Question pulled the phone back and stared at it, "Yes!"

"Overtones," Hartley said, "Sometimes called double-voicing. You can hear it in Gregorian chanting. He'd need an amplifier to get the frequencies right to affect the mind, though - tough to do with voice alone or I wouldn't need my flute."

"So what he's doing is similar to you?"

"It's exactly similar to me. You need some help?"

"I won't say no. We can use breathers against his gas, but this - we couldn't even work out how he was doing it, let alone how to combat it before it takes us out."

Hartley glanced at the clock and sighed, "I'll be out as soon as I can."

* * *

The officer on desk-duty at the Gotham City Police Department finished up with another client and called for the next one. "I heard it's pretty bad," he said over his shoulder to the woman behind him, "Heard even the Bats are stymied."

Renee Montoya didn't look up from the filing cabinet, "They're always saying that and it's hardly ever true."

The officer dealt with the next person, glancing up as a tall man walked in. He took a number, poured a coffee and waited. "That's not what the Commish was saying. I heard they've called in an expert."

"Mm," was Renee's non-committal answer. Curse the GCPD's gossip network...

"Next?"

The man put down his barely-touched coffee. He walked up to the desk and flashed an ID badge, "James Jesse, Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'm looking for The Question. If any of your people know how to reach her, tell her I'll meet her at 10th and 10th at 10."

The tall man turned and left as abruptly as he'd arrived. The desk constable shrugged and looked over at Renee, "Whaddya suppose that was about?"

Renee shrugged, "Haven't got a clue."

* * *

Nine-thirty: She popped the capsule of binary gas, adjusted her fedora and started her run. Nine-forty-five: She scoped the area of 10th Avenue and 10th Street but found nothing peculiar. Nine-fifty-nine: She stepped into the empty pool of light shed by a street-lamp and waited. Ten o'clock: Without sound or motion, he was there.

_Someone's gonna be real glad to see you, mister._ Question nodded approvingly, "Good one. I'd heard you did special effects for a while."

"There's just no surprising anybody, anymore," sighed the Trickster.

"Sorry. I was here to meet a G-man, not a ghost."

"Ghost starts with G."

"And now you are the ghost who walks."

"No, that's the Phantom, he's a comic-book character. I'm the Trickster."

"And you should be a comic-book character. Those stripes? - not a good look."

"Says the chick with no face."

"What's your question?"

"I'm looking for Piper. You probably don't know anything, but it's a place to start. I have to find him."

"Why?"

"I have to find out what happened to him," Trickster sighed, "I don't know what happened to him after I died. I've got to find out."

"Why? What's it to you?"

"He was my friend," Trickster said stiffly. He looked down, not sure how to explain, "The bullets were meant for him. He didn't abandon me after I died, until he had to. I have to find him."

"Thought you didn't like him."

Trickster's head snapped up, indignant, "Where'd you get that idea?!"

"Your reputation with the Rogues precedes you."

"I'm a little surprised by the lack of surprise, here. You don't appear to be doubting that I'm me."

"You left a coffee cup for me to find. You wanted me to match your fingerprints. That was a waste of perfectly good espresso, by the way."

Trickster shrugged, "It's almost like you've been expecting me."

"Didn't you say 10th and 10th at 10? Sorry, it was Agent Jesse who said that. Who is late. Isn't that just like a man." Trickster grinned; he was starting to like this woman. "I was not expecting you but neither am I surprised to see that you're alive."

"Why is that? Judging by the calendar, I was dead for a long time. And I **was** dead."

"You were dead," Question agreed.

"And now I'm alive again. And whole," Trickster wiggled his left hand, "How does_ that_ work?"

"You ever hear of a place called Apokalips?"

Trickster froze and stared at her, a sense of dread washing over him. "...What's the relevance?"

"You wanted to know what happened to Piper."

Trickster felt the blood drain from his face, "Oh god...! Oh god, no... Not him! Oh god, don't tell me he went** there!"**

"Okay."

"Oh god... Oh god... Oh, Piper..."

_Mmmmm... nahhh._ "'Course, he doesn't know quite how he got back to Earth, let alone wound up in Gotham."

"He **is** here?! Why didn't you say so in the first place?!"

"I had to be sure of your motives. The puppets were good but your reputation precedes you. I wondered if you were worth all that effort."

"Worth the effort, what's that supposed to mean? What ef..fort..." Trickster trailed off. Despite her blank mask, something in the Question's body language was tipping him off. "There was... When I.. woke up... I heard.. something. Music." Question was silent. Too silent. "...he brought me back, didn't he. ...my god..."

"Pure speculation."

"...my god... my god... Piper..." Trickster spun around and pleaded, "Question, if you have **any** idea where he is, **please** tell me! I _have_ to find him!"

Question watched his face for several moments. "Yeah, you do," she said softly.

Question was impressed by just how precisely Trickster's eyes could bore into her own, when he couldn't see them. "Why do you say it like that?"

"You're shrewd. You pick up on things. Good. I like that." Question sighed and reached under her hat to scratch her hair. "He's not the same as when you last saw him. He's... well, here in Gotham, we call it 'going bats.'"

"...Oh god!"

"You know what I mean?"

"Yeah. When they start to get obsessive and go all dark and they start to become the costume."

"Yeah. Some people think that's why Gotham has so many criminals. People see what happens to the good guys and they think 'if that's what being good does to you, no way, not for me.' Anyways, he isn't there yet but his feet are on the road, you know?"

"Oh god... So what you're saying is... he's not really 'the Pied Piper' anymore.. he's... he's..." Trickster spun around, underlighting his face with a mini-Maglight he'd pulled from god knew where, "He's Ratman!"

Question burst out laughing.

"I gotta find him now, I just gotta! Otherwise it's gonna be Ratcaves and Ratsignals and Ratmobiles and Ratarangs and I'm gonna have to change my name to I dunno Mouseketeer or something! It's gonna end in tears!"

Question was just about in tears. She was trying desperately to regain her composure but Trickster's antics were just so ridiculous and like the puppets, had come out of left field without warning. "Okay," she said when she had enough breath back, "I'll help you."

"What's he doing in Gotham?"

"Scarecrow's back, with a new gimmick. Piper thinks he's doing something with his voice."

Trickster gaped, _"Piper's_ going up against the_ Scarecrow?!_ In his condition?!"

"He's the only one who can."

"Oh god, **no!** He'll be destroyed!"

"I know he's going bats but he's a pretty bad-ass boy. He's pretty strong."

"But he doesn't think so!" Trickster said, "Look, Piper is **powerful.** His wall of sound can stop a locomotive. The hypersonic cannon can throw a guy fifty yards. He's achieved 6.4 on the Richter scale with the quakepipes. He can shake apart just about any substance, including flesh. He's hypnotised a guy into swimming five miles in open ocean. Crowds are nothing to him, neither are individuals - he could hypnotise you into doing whatever he wanted, and if he chose, you'd never even know it. Nobody knows the limits of Piper's power, not even Piper."

Question felt a little like she'd stuck her hand into a piranha tank when she got acquainted with Piper. "So what's stopping him?"

_"He is._ And that's why everybody's afraid of him and that's why everybody has such a hard time believing him when he's accused of something monstrous, even me."

"If he has such self-control, why are you so worried? Sounds like he'll be fine."

Trickster shook his head vigorously, "No, no, it's not fine. He slashed the kid. He snapped Mirror Master's mind. He brought** me** back from the dead, apparently...!"

"He doesn't know how he got back from Apokalips. He was playing his swan song and the place was exploding around him, then the next thing he knew, he was here," Question said thoughtfully.

"Don't you get it?! The one who's most afraid of what Piper can do is **Piper!** He's already down and if he's showing this much power, he'll be scaring himself already! All the Scarecrow needs is one toehold, man, one opening, and Piper'll collapse like a house of cards!"

Question stared at him, then snatched his hand and broke into a run, "Come on!"


	9. Scare

_So soft, so very, very soft, the tune... So gentle.. winding out of a dream... Such a soft, soothing tune... gently repeating... coaxing him out... drawing him forth, in search of the lovely, lovely tune..._

_So mournful, the tune... such gentle sadness... the tender heart lies bleeding... bleeding the notes of the tune... rivulets of sweet, sweet music around his feet, drawing him forth in search of the lovely, lovely tune..._

_So soft and sad and soothing, the tune... so restful to the soul... coaxing and comforting... smoothing away the pain... and the fear... the precious fear..._

_"I've never seen you before," he whispers into the night._

"No,"_ says the hooded figure._

_"You're not from around here?" he asks, curious._

"No,"_ says the figure of a dream. A figure of fear clad in dark green and thunder grey, he is all but invisible in the night, save for his glowing green eyes._

_"How do you talk and play that flute at the same time?" he asks, curious._

"I'm good at it," _the beautiful dark dream replies._

_Just a little closer... just a little closer... "Is it you who's making that tune? That tune that takes away the fear?"_

"Yes."

_"The fear is mine. You have taken something of mine. You have taken my fear."_

"Only borrowing it for a little while."

"You've taken my fear... That wasn't very nice."

"I'm not a nice person."

_"Oh but you are. I can tell. It's in your song, your song is so sad, so mournful. It sings of your suffering. You've suffered, as only nice people can. So many bad things happen to good people. You've been very kind, haven't you? You've been a good person and where has it gotten you?" He tilts his head, blinking lazily, heavily... the sweet, sweet music... "You've changed your tune."_

"Done that a few times."

_"And what is that charming chime?"_

"Just my voice mail." _Damn, he keeps changing frequencies so my disrupter can't keep up,_ Piper thought, _And his frequencies are disrupting my frequencies._

_"Voice mail? But there is no voice mail. It's empty. There's no one left to fill it, is there. It's in your song, all the loneliness, all the tears you've shed, all the pain in your sweet, kind, empty heart... Your music tells me so much... It tells me...you're the Piper." Now the sweet dream is startled, ever so slightly, but ever so slightly is enough... "I've heard about you. They said you helped kill the Flash but that isn't true, is it? You'd never hurt the Flash... You're too kind... but nobody believed you... Isn't that just the way it always goes? The innocent have everything to fear..."_

Isn't that how it went? The loneliness and alienation, the fear, the despair, the shattered self-wor-

"DUCK!" Piper and the Scarecrow both stared at the yellow rubber duck that landed between them. And exploded. Then the sound that only Piper could hear, the sound.. not the air displacement of the Flash, no, it's different, like someone... like someone running on air.

"YEEEAAAAHHHHHH-HOO!!" The blue and yellow egg spiralled down and shattered, splashing goop all over the Scarecrow. "Dis mah special silly putty! Ordinary silly putty just peels right off! This... doesn't."

_**Trickster?!**_ Piper stared in shock and felt the rage building up,_ God damn it, is the kid that dense?_

Then the apparition turned and looked him full in the face and said, "Damn, Piper, you just never cease to amaze me! I mean, you resisted Poison Ivy's sex pollen for days and now Scarecrow's fear stuff! Dude!" -- and then there was only shock.

The apparition in the stripes and blue jacket not only looked like James Jesse and sounded like James Jesse, he moved like James Jesse. He darted forward and snatched the tuning fork off of Piper's bandolier, then shot up on his airwalkers before either Piper or Scarecrow could react. "Did I hear you calling Piper's pure heart empty?! I can't forgive that! I'll punish you with -" the figure spun in mid-air and struck a pose - and the tuning fork, **"Really** bad karaoke!!"

The dissonent tones fractured the Scarecrow's voice. Piper shook his head, shaking off the effects, _The gas, of course! I'm such an idiot! Question said he wasn't using it so I forgot all about it!_ He retuned his disrupter for wide-band, which would also disrupt his flute,_ I was trying to keep this tidy, but obviously that isn't going to work._

_"Oh yes... You are the Trickster?"_

"That's me, the one and only! Accept no imitations, offer void where prohibited!!"

_This one is not a dream of fear but a nightmare of joyous colour and smiles. "I had heard that Deadshot had killed you."_

"Yeah but the guy's a total incompetant, I mean, you can see how good of a job he did, right? It's so hard to get good help these days."

_"Then you do not fear death?"_

"Been there, done that, got the t-shirt! See?" _The demon calling himself the Trickster pulls open his jacket, revealing an eye-bleeding yellow shirt that reads 'Dead and Loving It.'_

_"Then you are an enemy of fear!!" he snarls -- and the demon, who has wrapped an elastic band around the tines of the tuning fork, uses it as a slingshot to shoot a small cube of substance right into his mouth. "!! ..Mmph!!"_

"Dis mah special chewing gum! 'Cause you talk too much." The Trickster ran circles around the Scarecrow, spraying him with silly string that hardened into an unbreakable reinforced filament rope. Then he stood back, "Tah-dahhhh! No applause please, just throw money. Pretty good, huh, Piper?" He looked around, "Piper? Where'd he go?!" He shot up over the rooftops but Piper had vanished into the night. "Piper!" he wailed, "Why'd you leave?!"

* * *

The Question shook her head and snapped her celphone shut, "He's not picking up. I'm as confused as you are."

Trickster ran his hands through his hair and took back his sack-onna-stick, "Thanks for watching my stuff."

"No problem. That was good work, fast. You're right, you work well together. But... Scarecrow wasn't using the gas."

Trickster sighed again, "I know that and you know that, but Piper... needed to not know that."

"I get you. What do you think went wrong?"

James shrugged. The sirens were closing in, clearly audible from the rooftop where they sat. "Knowing him, he probably tried for a quick and quiet take-down with minimal property damage. Probably would've worked if he weren't already messed. Like I said, one toe-hold, that's all it takes."

"I meant at the end there."

"I don't know. I don't know. Unless..." he turned to look frankly at the Question, _"Did _he have something to do with me being alive again? You said 'pure speculation' but the way you said it makes me think not."

Question took off her hat and scratched her head, "I don't know much about it. During the crisis, he tried something. It didn't work but it didn't not-work, either. Beyond that, he won't tell me any details."

"The fact that he told you that much says a lot. That's probably it then. The guy's easily one of the strongest of the Rogues in terms of power and mental strength, but he's got self-esteem issues like you wouldn't believe."

"Sounds about right, then," Question nodded then tilted her head, "You know him pretty well."

"Better than I thought," James admitted, "I'm surprised at myself." He looked out over the Gotham city night, watched the strobing police lights as they took the Scarecrow into custody. "Now what am I gonna do?"

He looked up at the sound of ripping paper to see Question holding out a sheet from a notepad. "He's here," she said, "I don't know his precise location, but this is the general vicinity. You might be able to track him."

He took it, "Pretty far from Keystone."

"Home away from home. After the Rogues, he's lying low for a while. He only came out here because I asked him to. I'm sorry; if I'd known better..."

Trickster waved a hand dismissively, "If I can find him, I can fix him. I know what he needs. What's the phone number?"

"Question's cel. You find him... you let me know."

"Thanks, I owe you."

Question shook her head, "Already paid for. That 'Sailor Moon' schtick? - Priceless."


	10. Lost

He put on his blue suede shoes and boarded the plane. It didn't touch down in the land of the delta blues, but it _was_ pouring rain. James sighed and went to rent a car. While he waited, he studied some maps of the area the Question had indicated, trying to intuit where in this section of Rocky Mountain boondocks Piper would have gone. _Dammit, Hartley! Why'd you leave? Where'd you go?_ At least he was still in the states. This area was way too far south, so Piper probably hadn't gone to that five hundred dollar a night kilt palace he'd talked about.

The rental was too perfect. He'd paid extra for it, but once he'd spotted it on the lot, he had to have it. It'd make the search considerably more entertaining, at least. He drove for a while, until he started feeling hypnotised by the sushing of the rain and the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers. He found a cybercafe and stopped to get a coffee and to surf the web for anything, **anything** that might indicate which of the area's little villages and hamlets might be hiding a sonics genius with a rat fixation.

One of them had a comics store. Not just a second-hand bookshop that decided to take advantage of a niche market, but a bona fide comics shop. It had only a second-hand music shop but it idid/i have a high-speed internet node. Piper had had an iPod, so he was no stranger to downloading his music, and he was as much of a comics nerd as James was. He drew a circle around the village then went back out to the rental. _Tomorrow, then._

* * * *

"Hi there, I wonder if you could help me? I'm looking for a friend of mine..." He could tell he'd hit the jackpot by the way people reacted when he flashed Hartley's picture. The eyes of each person he asked flashed recognition, then hardened as their owners denied knowledge. Hartley was here, people knew about him, and wanted to protect him. Good. It was nice that Hart was somewhere safe, after the hell they'd been through. Now he just had to wait.

Not for nearly as long as he'd anticipated, as it turned out. He hadn't expected to find him so fast, but the clerk in the coffee shop would never win at poker -- her face had given away much, and a few careful questions produced the non-answers he was looking for. He walked the streets for a while, staying alert. It was new-issues day so he figured the comics store would be the most likely place to find Hartley. Then he noticed the bike parked in front of the grocery store.

It was a Harley Davidson, sleek and powerful and kitted for travel. It was a dark, dark green, so dark it looked black. And it had a decal of a flaming rat with burning eyes. _Rat out of Hell,_ James thought, grinning widely, _Now** that's** a Pipcycle!_ He turned on his light-refraction generator and waited. The door opened and he felt his pulse race.

_Piper!!_

And not dressed like James had ever known him. He thought about his favorite picture of Piper, about its dark, almost erotic magnetism -- Hartley's current civvies had the same quality. Tight black leather chaps over jeans, silver studs gleaming. A green mesh shirt just visible under the studded black leather jacket. He bent to put the groceries into the saddlebags of the bike and James bit off a laugh -- on the back of the jacket was a picture of a little skeletal rat Grim Reaper, complete with robe, scythe and glowing blue eye sockets._ Ahhh, that's Hartley for you... Even at his most menacing, there's still something quirky going on there,_ James thought fondly. All this time searching, he'd thought about what to say, what to do, but now that he'd finally found his prey, something entirely different came to mind.

Hartley had super-sensitive hearing. He could hear the Flash's approach._ I am **so** going to get beat up for this and it'll be worth every punch, _James thought. Under his breath, not even audible to himself, he whispered, "Hey Hartley, wanna get lucky tonight?"

Hartley's head snapped up and whipped around, then turned as he focussed his hearing. James stayed very quiet, not daring even to breathe.

"What's with the outfit, Hart? You goin' all YMCA on me?"

"Oh no..." Hartley groaned under his breath, "Not this again."

"Sa'matta, Hart?"

Hartley passed a hand over his face, "Not hearing this." He gunned the engine to life and glanced in the mirrors.

And saw the Trickster standing behind him, grinning.

He whipped around but there was no one there. _Great, just great._ He put the bike in gear.

* * * *

"You okay, Hartley? You look a bit peaky."

"I'm fine," he lied. He took the cappucino and pushed the bill across the counter.

"By the way, I thought you should know... There's some guy going around asking about you. He was in here this morning."

"Great. Just great," Hartley sighed. Normally he enjoyed his mid-week outings - as much as he could enjoy anything, these days. But suddenly he'd started hallucinating Trickster's voice again and this time that wasn't all -- he was seeing the guy everywhere he looked, too. Pass a guy on the sidewalk who, out of the corner of his eye, looked just like James, but when he turned to look, there was nobody there. Picked up his comics and glanced up to see what might have been James's sunny wicked smile, but when he looked, it was someone totally different. And there was that fight with the Scarecrow...

At least, he'd_ thought_ he was hallucinating, but if someone was actually looking for him... After Scarecrow, he wasn't so sure. Someone might be trying to unhinge him. Waller maybe, or that idiot kid, or maybe someone after vengeance for Mirror Master. But if it was an impersonator, they were damned good -- they not only looked like James Jesse and sounded like James Jesse, they **moved** like James Jesse. James's muscles had never forgotten his early circus training. His every movement was precise, flawless, with no wasted motion at all. He was light on his feet and could turn on a dime. His grace was unconscious. Hartley had admired it for years, since they were both young Rogues. It would be exceedingly difficult to imitate convincingly, to someone who'd known James for so long.

This was cruel, though. He _missed_ James Jesse. Even though their relationship swung wildly between constant petty bickering and Hartley trying desperately to keep whatever he was drinking from spraying out his nose, he missed it. He almost - _almost_ - missed the gay jokes. But not yet.

"You get one for me, Hart?"

"You're dead, James," Hartley murmured, "You don't drink coffee."

"Hey, that's prejudice, that is!"

"No, it's a statement of fact."

"I prefer 'vitally challenged,' thankyouverymuch."

"I'm sure you do. It doesn't change the fact that you're dead."

"You just forgot the hazelnut shot and don't wanna admit it."

Hartley finished the coffee and went out to his bike, "James, if you were alive, I would most gladly buy you coffee. But you're not alive. You're dead."

"Y'know, it's pretty ironic, a guy like_ you_ being prejudiced against us differently-incarnated."

"Oh for pity's sake..." Hartley pulled on his helmet and gunned the engine, "Y'know, James, you're even more annoying dead than you were alive."

"Awwww, Hartley, that's the sweetest thing you've ever said to me."

He glanced in the mirrors and saw the Trickster with a polka-dot bag on a stick over his shoulder, leaning against a blue and yellow Smart Car. This time he didn't bother to check. He just shook his head and took off.

* * * *

The voice had stopped by the time he got home. Yesterday's rain had returned in the form of a grey drizzle but it was looking to storm towards evening. Hartley sat on his chesterfield and cuddled the Trickster puppet to his chest. He wasn't doing anything - not working on his gizmos or reading his new issues or even playing with his rats. He just sat on the chesterfield, in silence.

Twelve feet up a tree, James had his binoculars out and was scoping out the ramshackle single-wide trailer hidden up the mountain some miles from the village. Evidently Piper had decided to take "living in the sticks" rather literally, as there was hardly any yard space at all, the whole house was hemmed in by towering evergreens. Around the back was the bike, under a tarp, and a generator. All the furniture looked like it had been bought second-hand. The only new items were the mattress and, of course, the sound equipment, currently silent.

And _that_ was how James knew that the Question was right. Piper _hated_ silence, he couldn't stand it. The only time he could bear silence was when he was listening to his environment, focussing his incredible hearing. This place wasn't just quiet, there was _no music!_

This place clearly wasn't intended to be lived in; it was for existing in. It was a place to pass the time while Hartley waited for the last of his rats to die. Then, when there was no one left to need him.... _Well that's not going to happen_, James thought firmly, aiming one of his gadgets,_ I can't erase the pain, Piper, but I can make it worthwhile. You're gonna beat the crap outta me when you figure it out._

Hartley's eyes flicked up towards the sound system. It had started playing by itself. He got up, still holding the Trickster puppet, and went over to examine it as the strains of Simple Minds' "Alive and Kicking" wound gently into the room. He touched the stop tab and the silence closed back in. It stayed off and Hartley turned around to go back to the chesterfield, only to spin back around when the music inexplicably resumed. He sat on the chesterfield and stared at the stereo speculatively.

Several of his rats crawled up his legs and into his arms. He cuddled them and stroked them, then frowned as the music changed to the theme from "The Greatest American Hero." _Now that's odd,_ Hartley thought, _I didn't think I had that song. ...I **don't** have that song._ He sat on the chesterfield, cuddling the rats and the Trickster puppet, and wondered if he was going insane. Or equally likely, someone was trying to drive him insane, making him think he was seeing James.

Another rat slipped in and clamboured up onto the chesterfield. Hartley stared at it, "There is?" He stared some more, listening to something only he could hear, "Are you sure?" Then he leaned back and looked thoughtful.

Well now, that changed a few things. Made him more certain of his sanity, for one. Project CADMUS? S.T.A.R. Labs? Lexcorp? _Who else is making working clones? Or in the case of Lexcorp, android duplicates. .... oh god, a robot RealDoll of the Trickster, wouldn't he just love that._ But why would anyone clone _Trickster?_ Although for S.T.A.R, the answer would just be 'because they could.' Batman, sure, Superman, definitely, even Flash.. but Trickster didn't really have anything special going for him, not in a way that would make him a person of interest to the cloning labs.

Unless....... unless......... That stunt hadn't actually **worked**, had it? _But it's been so long!_ But... how long do these things take? If it hadn't been done before, who'd know?

Hartley glanced up as Billy Squier's "Rock Me Tonight" fingersnapped its way into the room. If it _was_ James, would he be dicking around with Hartley's mind like this? **_Hell yes he would!_**

The sky was rapidly darkening and a peal of thunder rumbled. The storm would soon force whoever was out there to make a move one way or the other.

* * * *

It was dark and stormy, alright. Lightning flashed, followed immediately by a sharp crack of thunder. It rolled on, sounding like someone pounding on the door. Hartley turned his head and focussed his hearing -- someone **was** pounding on the door.

"Hartley, open up! C'mon, dude, I'm freezing my nadgers off out here!"

Hartley flung the door open and stared. The Trickster stood there, polka-dotted bag-onna-stick on his shoulder, beaming at him like sunshine on a cloudy day.

"Hiya, Hart! Didja miss me?"


	11. Found

Hartley wasn't smiling, "Someone's got a really sick idea of a joke. Is this Waller's idea? Or S.T.A.R's"

The Trickster pointed both index fingers at his beaming smile, "Nope! It's me!"

"Or are you one of Luthor's robot RealDolls?"

James blinked, "Wha?" He shook his head, trying to clear out the horrible mental image that surfaced, "Nah, nah, it's really me."

"Yeah right. Last time I saw him, Trickster was **very** dead. And missing a hand," Hartley pointed to the intact appendage.

"True and true. Which you should've done sooner but I'll forgive you because you're sentimental on account of being queer." That earned him a black look which James blithely ignored. He pushed past Hartley into the trailer, letting him close the door on the rain. He set down his bag-onna-stick and slid off his jacket, then shook himself like a dog, spraying Hartley with rainwater. Looking up at the ceiling and tapping his chin in exaggerated thought, he drawled, "Hmm, what could I possibly say that would convince you that I'm me and not some clone, simulacrum, robot RealDoll or other. I know! - How 'bout the first time we had it off?" And he proceeded to describe, in juicy detail, while Hartley's eyes got rounder and rounder.

Hartley stood shaking his head, "My God, if you **are** a clone, someone did a real good job on you, 'cause I've never told anyone about that fiasco."

"I knew that'd convince youHEY Whaddya mean, **fiasco?!?"**

"That **was** a fiasco!"

"I thought you liked it!"

"That doesn't mean it wasn't a fiasco! And I'm **not** convinced."

"Do I have to detail all your birthmarks?"

"Those memories could have been cloned out of what was left of Trickster's brain!"

James sighed and nodded then peeled off his mask. "Alright, that's a valid point. Alright, something else then, something _nobody_ else knows." And he described Piper's telling him about the abortions, while Hartley stared at him with a mixture of deep distrust, apprehension and growing hope.

"...There's no way you could possibly know about that."

"There's one way."

"But..... how?"

James tilted his head, "I'm told _you_ hold the answer to that. As well as how I came to be whole again." He waved his left hand.

"I mean... You mean, _it worked?!_"

"Hell yeah it worked!"

Hartley shook his head, puzzled, "But it's been... I was sure it hadn't..."

James pushed his hand through his wet hair. Piper's reaction was _so worth_ standing out in the rain for half an hour. "Yah, well... there were... complications. I got one heck of a medical bill. But it's all good, everything works and I remember everything. You did great."

"I can't believe it really worked," Hartley said faintly. He shook his head, "Don't waste it. I can't do it again. Like you said, there were complications."

"So why'd you do it?"

"You didn't deserve what was done to you," Hartley said simply.

"That's it?" Hartley shrugged and said nothing more. "Oh. I kinda wondered, coz if you didn't make me gay or nothin' then--*" James immediately knew he'd said the wrong thing; the fast uppercut to the mouth was a clue.

"Get out," Hartley's voice was a low growl.

James coughed and spat blood, "..ow... Hart, hang on, lemme rephrase..."

**"GET OUT!"**

"Hart, for chrissakes, I **know** you'd never pull a Zatanna on me! I just fucked up what I was trying to say! I'm sorry, I just fucked it up, that's **all."** The apology seemed to buy him a reprieve. He tried to talk fast and found it difficult, not from the pain in his mouth. "Look, this.. this isn't easy for me to say, okay? Look, Piper... Hartley... You... Look, no one has ever given a rat's ass about me, **ever**..."

"Have you ever given a rat's ass about anybody else?"

**"YES."** Hartley shrugged a half-apology. "Yes. I have. For the fat lot of good it did. Including some jack-ass queer called Rathaway that I met ages ago. You creeped me out but I liked you anyway, which creeped me out even more."

Hartley rolled his eyes, "Yes, yes I know all about your ho.."

"Not finished!!!" James snapped and Hartley shut up. "Hart, you fuckin' dragged my dead ass through the desert and then you fuckin' _brought me back to fuckin' life?_ You took all my shit and you still did that. You still thought I was worth bringing back."

Hartley canted his head to one side, "How can you know about that? How can you know about the desert and... about my mother?"

James looked up and there was something in his eyes that made Hartley's blood congeal. "I said... there were complications. I remember... _everything."_

"Every.... oh god, James, even...? Oh god....!" Horror filled him and he felt the blood drain out of his face, "Oh god, James, I'm so sorry..! I'm so sorry. I tried to think everything through but I never even thought... oh god, I should've just left you alone..."

**"NO!!!"** James seized Hartley's shoulders and shook him, "Don't you ever, **ever** blame yourself! You brought me back and I'm... there are no words... Look, everything, every nightmare, it's all worth it, see? You listenin' to me, Piper? You fuckin' hearing what I'm saying? You gave me a second shot at life and yeah there are some side effects but it's _all. fuckin'. worth it."_ James let go and they stared at each other for several minutes.

"So what you're trying to say is thank you."

James sagged and shrugged, "Yeah. Yeah. Sure." Hartley flexed an eyebrow. It was too much; James blushed and looked away. Desperately seeking a reprieve, he waved his left hand and pointed at it, "How the hell did you do this?! I mean, my body was...." he broke off and shook his head, "And I seem to have lost a few years somewhere as well."

"He was younger than you," Hartley said quietly, "The other Trickster."

"What other Trickster? You mean Axel?"

Hartley sat on the chesterfield and pushed his hands through his hair, "You know about the parallel worlds, right?" James nodded, coming to sit beside him. "One of them... their Trickster had been in a coma for years. His body had healed from whatever put him there and it was working fine, but whatever turns a body from a slab of meat into a person just wasn't there. Their Doctor Fate said that his soul was long gone. Then she did some sensing around and told me that your soul was remarkably intact and present. So... he was a body with no soul... and you were a soul with no body... and with what I learned about the Anti-Life Equation..." Piper trailed off and looked away, "I thought it hadn't worked."

"So, what, you just left me?"

Hartley shook his head, "Not intentionally. There was... heh, there was yet another Crisis... things are starting to become a habit, we might even get used to them."

"'What's all the noise?' 'Oh, it's another bloody Crisis.' 'Oh is that all? Jolly good, dear, pour the tea.'" James nodded - they'd both survived other Crises. It was hard to keep track of your own thoughts, let alone anything else, when more than one universe was coming down around your ears. "So, if he was from a parallel Earth... how'd I get _here?"_

Piper shook his head, "I don't know. I wasn't there for that part. It all got a little crazy after."

James nodded and digested it in silence for a few moments, then said, "I don't suppose you thought about..."

Hartley nodded, "Yeah. There was a ... problem. Seems he was born in the 30th Century... but the 30th Century he was born in doesn't exist anymore. It all got changed, during one of the _other_ Crises. So, he was born in the future, lived in the past, and that future now doesn't happen... Apparently it's been playing merry hell with the universes ever since."

James let out a low whistle and nodded. Then he briefly covered his face with his hands and looked away, "Can't believe you did all that for **me.**"

Hartley shrugged again, "You didn't deserve what was done to you." Then he frowned, "What the hell? The other guy wasn't scarred, how did that get there?"

James glanced at his left wrist and blushed, "Uh, yeah, uh... I did that." To Hartley's shocked and baffled look, he explained, "I was really loopy when I came out of it... brain all scrambled up, memories and things... couldn't even remember how to speak English. Thank god I remembered how to speak Italian. Anyways," he looked away again, "I couldn't... I kept thinking there was something wrong with it... heh, yeah, that it was there!" He shook his head, "Somehow, I did that to myself."

"But... why?"

James looked away again. It was several moments before he replied, in a small voice, "Because you weren't there."

"What?"

"Ever since I woke up, all that's been on my mind has been finding you. Every person I met, the first thing out of my mouth was 'Where's Piper?' Like that kid's show, 'Where in the World is Hartley Rathaway?' And then I finally get a lead on you and you left. Piper, why'd you leave?"

Now it was Hartley's turn to look away. The hurt on James's face looked too genuine. "I figured... with everything we'd gone through... you'd've had enough of me for one lifetime... I figured you wouldn't want to see me again."

If James was faking the hurt, he was a damned good actor, even down to the tears that spilled over. "How could you think that?! You're all I've thought about since before I woke up! Why the hell would you bring me back if you thought..."

"I didn't bring you back for me!" Piper interrupted, "I brought you back for you! You didn't deserve what that jackass did to you, that's all!" He passed his hand over his face, "It's enough to know that you're alive."

"So... you didn't..."

"I'd be pretty fucking **stupid** to bring you back for me, wouldn't I! As you kept reminding me over and over, you're straight!"

A leaden silence fell. Not what Hartley had expected. Nor was James covering his face with his hands again, nor whispering, "I don't know what I am, anymore."

"James..."

"Look, I'm having a little bit of trouble dealing with the fact that the only person who thinks I'm worth dragging through the desert and resurrecting and doing all that shit for **is a guy!** But I'm dealing with it. I'm not stupid, I've worked it all out."

"James..."

"Look, I... I didn't come just to visit," James admitted, "I came to stay. If you want me to. If you don't want me, just say the word and I'll be out of your life forever if that's what you want."

"I don't want you out of my life."

"Good... That's good. 'Coz..." James pushed his hands through his hair with a heavy sigh, "This has never happened to me before. I've never felt this strongly about _anyone_ before, much less another man."

"James, don't..." Hartley's voice was barely audible even to himself.

"I don't... Somewhere, somehow, you became the most important person in my life. And if... 'Just friends' or.. it doesn't matter anymore."

"No, James, please..." Hartley's voice was still almost inaudible.

"All I know for sure is, I belong with you. It doesn't matter how and I don't understand why. But I can deal with it, I can make it work, if you want... Hart? Oh god, Hart, what's wrong?!"

Hartley was up and backing slowly away, shivering and shaking his head and trying desperately not to cry. "James, please, don't do this to me, not now, _please...!"_

James stared at him and realized what had happened. He was reminded of the time Mirror Master had turned him half into glass -- the slightest touch, even from those trying to help him, had shattered him and hurt like nothing he'd ever imagined. Piper looked like a cornered animal, heh, a cornered rat; James stared at him, feeling helpless. Then he reached out with his scarred left hand. "C'mere... Hart.. c'mere... c'mere..." He linked his fingers through Piper's, matching their scars, and drew him to sit beside him again. "What happened to you after I died?" he asked in the quietest tone, "Question said you wound up on Apokalips. I don't know much about it but I know it's going to Hell while still alive. What happened to you there?" Hartley didn't answer. "Please, Hart... please tell me."

Hartley was silent for so long, James thought he wasn't going to answer. James was able to get just about anybody to open up to him but Piper knew it, which is what made him exceptionally difficult. For a long time, Hartley stared at the matched scars on their wrists. Then he glanced at James and the look there made him wince. Finally he told James about his ordeal on the alien world, at the hands of the alien god.

James sat back and started to chuckle. "Now **that's** a mind-fuck! **Damn!** You just can't help but admire that one! Sow a few seeds and just sit back and watch you do the rest of it yourself! That's just brilliant. Also very cruel." He sat back and tented his fingers while he thought about it -- Hartley wouldn't think he was taking it seriously if he didn't think about it.

"Yeah, well... He won't be doing it again. He's dead. ...I killed him."

James blinked, "You what?"

"...I blew up his head."

James blinked twice, "What, like tweedle-dee-dee, kersplutch?" Piper nodded sadly. _"You_ **killed** a guy, over _me?"_

"You didn't deserve what he did to you. Using you that way, that was just..." He shook his head and looked away, "I'm sorry James. He was just using you."

James stared at him. The rain drummed down harder, as though weighted with this new knowledge. Piper just wasn't a killer; he'd demonstrated that once before, in a way that had made James feel horrible for having doubted him. If he'd been pushed past his breaking point like that... for some idiot's idea of fun.

_And then I come in saying stuff and you think it's all a residue of this DeSaad guy's spells..._ And.. was it? Was what he was feeling just an imposition? _Dammit, I just went through all this crap! And how far back would it have gone, anyways? If Magenta picked up on it during the Project days..._ James's eyes narrowed as he realized, _Now he's got **me** doing it._ He pondered a little longer._ If I died, wouldn't that have broken any spell on me? Guy would've lost interest, right? So either it's one heck of a spell or what I'm feeling is real. But even so, someone manipulating me and getting me killed, just to screw up Piper... And it worked, too. God, look at him, the poor guy's so messed up now, what the hell could I say that could convince him? _

And then, very slowly, the Trickster's oily smile spread across James Jesse's face.

Hartley looked apprehensive, "What?"

"Wouldn't it just piss him right off if his little stunt backfired?"

"Huh?"

"I mean it! I mean, his idea was to break your heart and probably screw around with my head too, right? So wouldn't it get up his nose if we ran with it instead? If, instead of breaking you, he handed you the keys to the happymobile?"

Hartley shook his head warily, "James, do you realize what you're saying?"

James nodded vigorously, "Yeah! It's the best possible revenge we could take!"

"But... James, you **are** str..."

"I told you, I worked it out," James interrupted, "I can work around it, and flipping the forks to the jackass who got me killed is just added incentive."

Hartley looked away. The silence stretched out and for the first time, it dawned on James to wonder whether Hartley was even interested in him. For the longest time, he'd just been running on the assumption that Piper was interested, but now that he really thought about it, he couldn't _really_ think of any evidence. He shifted uncomfortably, wondering if Piper was trying to let him down easy, wondering if he'd just shot it all and gone through all of this for nothing, wondering how much it was going to hurt if he had.

Hartley looked away. If he had any doubts left, that cleared away all of them: Only James would consider getting into a gay relationship as a way of flipping somebody off. That was James, ever a surprise. Years of being unreadable, then suddenly all the masks are off and he's more naked than he'd be with his clothes off. Hartley glanced at the matching scars on their wrists, still not quite able to believe that James had done that to himself, then glanced at James. _All these years of being unreadable and suddenly you're an open book with big letters and See Spot Run,_ Hartley thought, _You're scared you've gone too far._ He looked away again; seeing James completely open like this left him reeling as much as James had when he'd told him that he'd brought him back. Shocked and scared him just as much, to learn just how much, under all the banter and bickering, he really meant to James. He looked again at their matching scars and pushed his hands through his hair with a sigh. "...Thanks for bailing me out, back in Gotham."

James shrugged, "No problem. It was fun. I meant what I said though; Batwoman's still down." Hartley winced. "Gotta ask though.... What are you doing **here?**" James's gesture took in both the single-wide and the remote mountainous area.

"Got back to Keystone, found my house had been blown away by a tornado."

"Aw geez..."

"Pretty sure the universe hates me."

"It let me come back, didn't it?"

"That's what I mean."

"HEY!!"

"That's for messing with my head, you jerk!"

"Awww but Hartley, if I hadn't, you wouldn't have believed it was really me."

"And why the hell were you standing out in the rain?"

"So you wouldn't turn away a poor pathetic homeless Trickster! I had to look the part."

"You **are** the part."

"I got the part," James leered.

Hartley glared at him then his face shattered and he looked away abruptly. "Oh god I've missed you!" he sobbed.

"Fuck, man, it's like half my soul's been missing," James wept, hugging Piper tightly. They hugged and kissed twice before James really realized it, then he deliberately went for a third. By the time they'd cried themselves out, James felt cleansed and Hartley felt a lot less messed up.

"So, this mean I can stay?" James asked against Hartley's ear.

"I guess so." The smile that answered wasn't James's 'I'm so happy' beamy smile, but something almost relieved. "But I am **not** putting up with your stupid gay jokes in my own house! You hear the threat I'm making?"

"Loud and queerCLEAR!" James grinned sheepishly into Hartley's Look of Death, "...sorry."

"Drop dead, Tricks!"

"Already did!"


End file.
